General Performance: SYSMark 2007

Our journey starts with SYSMark 2007, the only all-encompassing performance suite in our review today. The idea here is simple: one benchmark to indicate the overall performance of your machine. SYSMark 2007 ends up being more of a dual-core benchmark as the applications/workload show minimal use of more than two threads.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Performance

To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.

The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.

Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.

There is no novelty to these issues. Its business. Buy any AMD X4 965+ and OC to 4Ghz.... thats the Novelty part.

Having ALL your best products - even those costing almost $300 that is slower than the competitions $200 lower-end CPUs is not fun.

I have a #2 desktop that is rendering videos daily (converting my OLD VHS) - and I'll need to upgrade its mobo/CPU to speed up the process. A NEW CPU will speed things up at lest 4-6x. (Its an OLD AMD X2).

The Intel's use less power, there is that odd-ball combination that allows the GPU of the intel be used to help render video faster.

So yeah, when looking at a $150~200 CPU, its performance that counts - not MHz.

Still, for most people - any $75~100 CPU will DO just fine. Including gaming.Reply

Considering that the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T is only $54 more and beats the new chip in most benchmarks while using less power under load (using max turbo @ 3.7, same clocks as the new 980 BE) I'd say that this new 4 core is a poor value comparatively.Reply

I'm sure the PhII is already stuck at 3.8GHz at reasonable voltages and has been this way for a long time.

I wonder how AMD feels when the mobile i7-2820QM is just as fast as their 4.2GHz OCed Phenom II X4. Bulldozer single-threaded performance and power consumption has to be at least the same as Nehalem to stand a fighting chance.Reply